'It's not about being perfect, just always trying to do a little bit better'

Next in our Plantier Features series, we catch up with Brendan, or Mr. Brendan as he is known by the kids he works with. Here he shares his journey from eating healthily growing up, to making his own discoveries about plant-based eating through research and trial and error.

Describe your personal food/diet journey?

Regarding my own personal food journey, I think it has been a pretty natural evolution. I grew up eating a low-fat diet and my mother was a fantastic, healthy-minded cook. Everyone in my family ran distance, did triathlons, and I was captain of my HS cross-country team. Healthy food choices were always an important part of my life. But, when I left home I certainly developed more of a taste for salt, sugar, and fat, and had not yet learned how to properly prepare my own healthy meals. Plus I was pretty broke during college, which made healthily eating appear to be more difficult (I say ‘appear’ because in retrospect, I don’t think it really was - I just believed it was).

I started watching a lot of documentaries about food in my mid-20s, and the conversations about vegetarianism / veganism started to become more common in my social circles. I slowly started to phase out meat, saving it for special occasions - a fancy steak for my birthday each year, for example. But like most things, the more I actually learned, the more my attitudes began to change.

The connections between meat consumption and climate change started to become impossible to ignore, as well as the connections between meat consumption and cancer. So I suppose the combination of slowly learning more and more about food, where it comes from, the health implications, the various industries and corporations and their bottom lines (to make money), while simultaneously beginning to recognise the connection between what I ate and how I felt, all contribute to the food choices I make now. And to be honest, I think that journey will always be ongoing. It’s not about being perfect, just always trying to do a little bit better.

We understand that you have decided to adopt a plant-based diet. What are the main reasons for making this change to your food choices?

I first tried going entirely plant-based about a year and a half ago, after watching the documentary ‘What the Health’ by Kip Andersen. The film made some astonishing connections between American health epidemics, like heart-disease, diabetes, and obesity, and the consumption of animal products. It seemed to explain and debunk a lot of the common myths people have about the vegan diet, for example, ‘How do you get your protein?’ The film ends with a call to try a 30-day Vegan challenge, where you register online and receive a daily email with tips, motivations, and recipes. I found it to be easier than I thought, and that I began to feel healthier in unexpected ways. I haven’t stayed 100% on a plant-based diet since then, but I’ve kept many of those habits strong and continue to adjust as I live and learn.

What benefits have you seen from adopting the plant-based diet?

Perhaps the greatest difference I have noticed is from giving up dairy. A huge fan of butter, heavy cream, whole milk in my coffee, and cheeses of all varieties, I was worried about this part at first. However, after a week at most I noticed that my sinuses were really clear for the first time ever. I could breathe through my nose and felt my airways to just be very smooth. Also I found my taste for other foods, particularly vegetables, was heightened. I learned that cream, when used in sauces for example, is a sacrifice of taste for texture. I could really start to notice the taste and water content in vegetables, I could appreciate the actual taste of coffee much better, and found that I did not miss cheese anywhere near as much as I feared. Also I found butter replacements, like Naturli’s Smørbar, to be a delicious butter replacement. I took a liking to alternative milks, like rice, oat, and almond, but don’t even use them very much now. I thought ditching dairy would be the hardest, but it turned out to be extremely easy, and the most rewarding change I’ve made.

What are your biggest challenges in making plant-based food choices?

The biggest challenge to plant-based eating probably involves eating anywhere other than at my own home. At home I am consistently eating a plant-based diet. But, whether at restaurants, which I don’t do very often, or at friends’ places, I don’t generally like setting myself apart from the group or making a fuss, and to be honest, I will sometimes compromise on my preferences and eat what is being served out of respect for my friends or hosts. The truth is, I still love the taste of MOST foods, and I love accepting the hospitality of others. So, in short, maybe the biggest challenge in eating a consistently plant-based diet is simply that more of the world isn’t on board. But I feel that is changing and going the right direction, slowly but surely.

What do you hope to see change to help you in your plant-based lifestyle choice?

I am happy to see my closest friends and family members making conscious and healthy choices. I love it when someone realises that a certain plant-based dish or item is ‘actually’ delicious, or that changing something about their diet has had a noticeable and positive effect on their overall feeling/health. Seeing these changes slowly growing in our society is also encouraging, but witnessing these revelations on a first-hand basis is truly inspiring. I brought my friend’s son out for vegan ice cream (Nice Cream) last summer, without telling him it was vegan. He ate it and said it was the best ice cream he ever had! But then his face when I told him it was vegan, was priceless! I’d like to see more and more of these personal revelations happen.